Itsaso Arana and Vito Sanz They co-write and star in Trueba’s new film, with a stellar cameo
Madrid. End of summer. A couple who shares philosophical reflections in bed, book in hand, a group of artist friends and a tremendous devotion to cinema and literature. It could be the setting for any of the seven fiction films of Jonas Truebabut at the same time it constitutes a unique entity within that compendium of fragments of life that make up his filmography.
‘You will return‘, presented in competition at the Filmmakers’ Fortnight at the Cannes Festival, is another small piece of the big puzzle from Trueba’s opus about feelings and relationships. Another throw of the deck of the same cards that the Madrid filmmaker rearranges with each hand, like those films with fragmented stories that share actors and change characters with each new story.
In ‘Volverás’, Jonás Trueba abandons the celebration of new milestones and beginnings to focus on the satisfaction of the endings and the deconstruction by convictions of what has been shaped by the passage of time, to make way for new lives.
At the end of the last summer light, an eternal couple decides that it is time to turn the page. There are no reasons, just an idea repeated like a mantra: they separate. Without further ado. After 14 years, it’s time to put an end to their relationship and, like the end of summer, let their time together slip through their fingers to let in the fresh air of a new beginning.
The couple formed by Itsaso Arana and Vito Sanzwho sign the text as co-writers, have made the decision by mutual agreement and want to celebrate it with their friends by organizing an anti-wedding the last day of summer. It’s not a drama, both are “fine.” Or at least that is what they repeat over and over again to their conviction by accumulation and that of others, who know even better than them that this is just a one-off thing. Or rather some ellipses.
A short plot reformulated with a loop structure as an emphasis of that process of conviction based on doubt and supported by rational argumentation, as is usually the case with Arana’s characters in Trueba’s films. In that formal coherence that characterizes his films, an apparently simple story reveals a second humanistic layer about uncertainty and decision making in a comfortable position of advantage.
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‘You will return’, habitual structures, recurring elements
In line with the whole of his work, ‘Volverás’ repeats the formula of his latest works, which share common narrative elements and also vital concerns, especially with his most recent ‘La Virgen de Agosto’ and ‘You have to come see her’, in his reflection on new beginnings, parenthood from doubt and the unconventional, the idea of the city and celebrating the little moments.
Also a metalinguistic work, following what is usual in Trueba’s stories, which takes the idea of cinema within cinema to its greatest expression, with a plot based on that revolutionary idea of celebrating separation that one’s father always talks about. of them: none other than the great Fernando Truebawhich with its cameo and its obligatory readings (such as ‘The Repetition’ by Sören Kierkegaard) adds the best contribution of the film.
A light-as-summer romantic comedy and that Madrid-French style so intrinsic to Jonás Trueba, which collects the most interesting elements of his most recent works, with a greater presence of the non-strident humor of the Trueba-Arana-Sanz trio in what could be considered the most rounded of his works. fictions since ‘The reconquest’.
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